InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ Disarm ( Chapter 17 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

The Edge of Resistance
Book Two: The Dissidents

“I used to be a little boy—so old in my shoes,
What I choose is my choice, what's a boy supposed to do?
The killer in me is the killer in you, my love.
I send this smile over to you.” -Smashing Pumpkins

Souta carried the weight of the Higurashi shrine on his fourteen-year-old shoulders. Yuka had come to believe that she was the one who did, but she was mistaken. Her obsession with discovering the truth about Kagome had made her as much detached from reality as the reclusive and prophesying Higurashi Mikomi and even as the tottering and senile grandfather. Souta had appeared to be indifferent, but that was only because he was the only one with his feet still on the ground.

The morning after his overnight stay at Satoru's, when the rain had stopped at last, Souta discovered his mother pouring over books that she had stacked in a city of towers in the kitchen. It had not taken him long to get the truth out of her. She had apologized again and again for forgetting his birthday, and promised to make it up to him. He asked only that she open her mind to him.

What she revealed did not shock him as much as she feared. Indeed, Souta had glimpsed the vision of the Hero and the Hound himself. After over five years of watching his sister travel through time, of association with the irrefutable half-demon, Inuyasha, and being hounded by something demonic or otherworldly himself on more than one occasion, nothing surprised him. His young mind had long adapted to accept the unacceptable.

He thumbed through one of the books.

“So…this is a prophesy?” he asked.

“Yes, sort of,” his mother answered. “You have to dig through the text to find the right words.”

“And it's about nee-chan?”

“Yes, among other things.”

“Does it say what we should do?”

Higurashi's eyes went distant, and she sighed. “No, not that I can tell.”

Souta found a notebook amongst the clutter, with his mother's handwriting on it.

“What is this?”

Higurashi followed his glance.

“Oh that? I've been gathering the phrases I've discovered. Condensing, I guess you could say.”

Souta could not resist.

“May I read it?” he asked her.

Higurashi nodded.

Souta studied his mother's scribbling, but could make nothing of it, and told her so.

“Yes, I know it's gibberish. I asked why it had to be so vague and obscure, but didn't get an answer.”

“Who do you think he is?” Souta asked. “That man, with the white hair?”

Higurashi put down her book and was silent. After a few minutes, she nodded her head.

“I wasn't sure at first, but now I think he's Inuyasha's father.”

Her son stared at her in amazement.

“I'm pretty sure now,” she insisted. “It's got to be him.”

Souta did not know what to say. His eyes drifted down to the paper again, and he read a line.

“When the mother of the Beloved reads the words it shall be a sign unto you. Beware! The Enemy hunts you!”

His blood ran cold. “Mama, didn't you think this was troubling?”

Higurashi came and peeked over his shoulder.

“Well, I don't know who the 'Beloved' is.”

Souta was silent, and his eyes did not leave the paper.

“Souta?” his mother brushed his cheek. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking the 'Beloved' could be nee-chan.”

Higurashi was startled. “Why do you think that?”

“Umm, well, in the first place, it's written here a lot,” he pointed to several lines that mentioned the Beloved, “and you said yourself that these writings were about nee-chan. And whose mother, besides nee-chan's, could be so important? And you are 'reading words'.”

His mother did not have an answer, but her eyes were doubtful.

“'The Enemy' is emphasized, as if it means someone very specific,” Souta went on.

“Naraku.”

Higurashi said the name for the first time in her life. It flared up in her mind like a coxcomb red flame and flickered out in another instant.

“Who is that?”

“Kagome has mentioned him, a few times,” she explained. “He is Inuyasha's enemy, something to do with the Shikon no Tama. But I don't know the details.”

“So the passage could be warning you that he's after you.”

“But that's impossible, Souta-kun. No one can come through the well besides Inuyasha and Kagome. We just don't know enough yet, that passage could be talking about anyone.”

Souta looked down at the notebook again. As Higurashi returned to her examination of the oracles, he continued to leaf through the pile of papers, and wondered why his mother had scribbled crescent moons on so many of them.

***

“Look out!”

Kagura came down on her back and a rush of air escaped her lungs with an “oomph”. Shippou had landed on top of her chest, his arms covering her head.
Before she could shout at him to get off her and let her breathe, his weight was gone again. Kagura sat up and saw that he was struggling with something, something black with many limbs that writhed in all directions. Whatever it was, it had lifted Shippou straight up into the air and he was trying to free himself.

“Shippou!” she cried out.

Kagura got to her feet, and was looking about in a non-thinking panic for something to do when she saw a dark figure move with hideous speed in the right field of her vision.

It was taller than any human, but its features were man-like. Kagura did not have time to make anything else out before it collided with her with its entire body. Her breath was knocked out of her again, and she pulled and fought, trying to run away. There were limbs everywhere, strong and wiry and covered with coarse, black hair, with clawed hands at each end. Kagura was forced to the ground on her back with the thing straddling her. Two of its hands held down her arms and two of the others gripped her neck.

She stared up at a face that was human but not human. The mouth was a set of slobbering pinchers, the nose two slits in the center of its face, and the eyes two clusters where Kagura could see multiple reflections of her own gaping face.
She clawed at the hands around her throat with feeble resistance. Her nose was full of the scent of rotting fruit and ash. She would have begged for release, if she could have spoken at all.

How can such a world exist? Were there no gods? Were there no saints or angels or spirits, charged with justice?

“Get off of her!” she heard Shippou shouting.

The world began to fade to a dark field with yellow halos. Then she heard a new sound that she did not understand. It was a loud screech, a metallic cry that rang out over the forest and echoed in the valley like a great bell.

Then her attacker was gone. It was pulled away with sudden and violent force. She sat up, covering her throat, gasping and looking around for the next attack.
She heard another scream. This one came from a different throat than the first and was a scream of agonized death, cut off in a fading gurgle.

Kagura looked up and saw an enormous raptor, larger than a house, gliding close to the ground and covering everything with his shadow. She stared, dumbfounded and wide-eyed, and she saw the body of her assailant impaled on his claws. A greenish black blood bubbled forth from its mouth and its wounds and dropped on the sparse grass in large puddles. As he flew past, the bird cocked his head to the side to look at her, and let out another shrill cry. This was the source of the first scream she had heard. When she saw the green eyes peering down at her, she trembled.

Son of a bitch, she thought, it's Shippou!

***
Last night I dreamt I went to the Hyouden again.

Higurashi awoke to find these words written on her bedroom mirror in red lipstick. She stared at the message for a long time. At first, she could not even understand it as a sentence, and then she wondered who had written it. It did not look like her handwriting, but then again, maybe…

Did she dream last night? She supposed she had, but she did not remember, and 'the Hyouden' meant nothing to her. She took a wad of tissue from the nightstand and began wiping away the cryptic letters. There was a knock on her bedroom door. Higurashi hurriedly erased the rest of the marks before answering.

“Come in.”

Yuka entered the room.

“Souta asked me to check on you. It's almost ten o'clock.”

Higurashi turned to her bedside clock in surprise.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I didn't realize. I must not have slept well.”

Yuka came to her side and placed the cool back of her hand against Higurashi's forehead. Higurashi was surprised but said nothing.

“You are warm,” the young woman said. “Are you feeling okay?”

Higurashi was about to answer that she felt fine (which was what she always said to such questions without thinking) when she noticed that the color had drained from Yuka's face. The girl was shifting her frightened eyes from the mirror to the room and back again. Higurashi feared that she had left an unnoticed message still on the glass. When she turned to look at the glass she recoiled, and had to grip Yuka's arm to keep from falling.

“Higurashi-san,” Yuka cried in a strangled whisper. “What's going on? What is this?”

The mirror did not reflect the room. Higurashi also looked back and forth, just to be sure, but there could be no mistake. Her dresser, nightstand, and four-poster bed were not there. According to the mirror's reflection, the mirror was sitting on a floor, leaning slightly. The room was large, and mostly unfurnished, except for a small bed on the floor in the corner. The architecture was grand, but ancient, set with dark, wooden beams and grey stone. The window looked out at a night sky.

“Higurashi-san!” Yuka was pale and shaking.

“Hush, Yuka-chan,” Higurashi whispered. “Hush!”

They stood and watched, transfixed, as a pair of feet glided across the floor of the other room, appearing to walk across Higurashi's dresser. Yuka dreaded the revelation of a specter and she begged her eyes to look away, but she was frozen like a cornered mouse.

Please. Please don't.

The person in the mirror-world walked away, toward the bed. Higurashi's nails dug into Yuka's arm.

“Kagome!” she sobbed, staring at the mirage with a pathetic fervor.

Yuka saw indeed that Kagome was lying down on the bed. She sat up on her elbows and looked at the mirror. Higurashi and Yuka, desperate and hungry and horrified, did not look away from that wistful expression. Kagome gave no indication that she saw them. She blew out the candle, and the mirror went black.
***

The hawk veered away and cast the mangled body of the monster into the trees. The green-black blood sprayed the striped bark of the maple trees and the puny white blooms of anemones. The corpse fell to the ground in pieces. He circled back and flew over Kagura again. She heard Shippou's normal voice call out to her.

“Kagura! What are you doing? Run!”

How does he do that?

She did not have the chance to wonder at it for long. Behind her she heard the sound of many of feet crashing through the forest, cracking trigs and trampling dead leaves. Then, from the cover of the trees, emerged a swarm of the same monster, too many to count. Kagura was on her feet and running the next instant.

She cursed her uselessness. Would she ever get her powers back?

She heard cries and screams behind her, some coming from the monsters, some from the giant bird that harassed them from the air. Kagura wanted to see what was happening, but she did not dare stop running. Her throat still burned with the marks of claws.

She was running and thinking so hard that she did not notice the end of the trees until she broke out of them and into the blazing sunlight. She fell to her knees, saving herself at the last minute from running off a high ledge that overlooked a rocky gorge.

Damn this rugged country!

She stood and turned to go back, but stopped when she heard the chittering glamour of the monsters coming through the trees, like an army of enormous beetles.

Did this mean they had killed Shippou?

Kagura surprised herself in that moment. She resolved that, if that were the case, she would turn and cast herself onto the rocks.

She was coming to the conclusion that she would have no choice but to do just that, when she heard the shrill cry of the hawk again. She looked up in time to see him getting close to her. In the next instant she was dangling in the air, looking down at the land getting smaller beneath her feet.

“I got you!” he shouted.

Kagura could see the dark, swarming mass of the monsters on the edge of the cliff. She watched in horror as they cascaded down the sides, using all their limbs to scale the steep incline.

Like spiders, she thought, and suppressed a gag.

It did not matter, however, because they would not be able to catch up with Shippou. By the time they began to descend, the cliff was a faint blue, hazy shape in the distance. She saw a mound in the forest, rising out from the trees like a bald head, and then she was dropped upon the grass. Shippou transformed back into his normal self and was beside her before she had even stood up again.

His eyes were wild and angry. His red hair had come loose in the wind and it billowed about his face in a tangled mess.

“Are you alright?” he asked her.

Kagura, stunned by the morning's events and staggered by this unexpected display, could only nod. She stared at him, not knowing what to say or do and fighting a dozen impulses at once.

I will follow you. Wherever you go, take me with you.

“Kagura, do you know what those creatures were?”

The question broke her delirium and confused her.

“No. Why would I?”

“Well,” Shippou chewed his lip. “They were spiders, or like spiders, and that smell…”

Ash and decay.

Kagura admitted to herself that she had tried to ignore it, to repress it, but it was all vanity.

“They smelled like Naraku,” she declared out in the open, under the bare witness of the noon sun.

Shippou nodded. He sat down on the grass and hung his head between his knees. Kagura realized that he must have been exhausted. She sat down and put her back against his.

In this ruined country brooding with unknown threats, they let the October sun beat down on their heads. Sleep came like a drug released by their aching limbs and thundering hearts.

***

The house was turned upside down. There was no calming Yuka or Higurashi. They could not be reached across their terror. It took Souta almost an hour to extract from them a complete account so that he could fully understand what had happened that morning.

Never did he more regret that Yuka was living there. He thought there was some chance that he could convince his mother that the vision meant nothing, was a solitary and isolated result of stress or insomnia. He might even convince her that it was a good sign, that Kagome was at least alive.

There was nothing he could say to mollify Yuka. She had no experience to allow her to accept the supernatural or magical. He could not very well explain to her that she had probably only seen his sister going about her usual business in the feudal era.

The only thing he could bring himself to say to them both was a ridiculous statement: “That mirror is very old.”

Yuka was in the courtyard, pacing. She had not returned to the house since she had run screaming from his mother's room.

His mother, on the other hand, had something to cling to, something to help her react to the phenomenon more decisively. She was rummaging through her books with a renewed desperation bordering on hysteria, hoping to find a passage that would explain to her what she had seen and why she had seen it.

Souta thought of his grandfather. The old man had become…remote, to say the least, but he still had moments, many moments in fact, of lucidity. If Souta found him in such a state today, perhaps he would know what to do.

He left the kitchen and went down the hall in the direction of his grandfather's suite. As he reached for the door, he was startled to see the air change, as if the time of day had made a sudden jump. He heard strange sounds that were not there before. There was music from a radio—

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to
Strawberry FieldsNothing is real

—the singing of birds, and laughter. He turned and saw Kagome standing before him.

She was wearing a pink sundress, with red strawberries printed on it, and a white hat, which she clutched as she ran down the hall laughing. She ran past him and he saw that his mother was there, waiting with her arms out.

This was not happening…it had already happened. He had leapt back over ten years of small victories and twisted disappointments. He found himself turning and heading back toward the kitchen. He realized he was shorter, and everything seemed bigger and newer. His mother was speaking to Kagome. She pushed aside her hair, which was so much longer than he knew it to be now.

“If you go to the ice cream parlor with your friends, you should take Souta. Just this once, Kagome, please?”

“Ah! But…mama!”

Kagome's eyes, eyes that had never seen demons or lonely love, were wide and her expression betrayed her disappointment.

“Now Kagome,” their mother chided her gently. “Be nice, you'll regret it later if you don't.”

“Hmm.” Kagome looked down at Souta.

Souta found that he was looking up at her younger face and tugging on her dress.

He remembered this! He wasn't just thinking about it, he was there; his fourteen-year-old self was housed in his four-year-old head.

The light faded and his vision blurred. He saw the world shrinking again.

No, wait! he managed to think, but it was gone. He was standing at the door to his grandfather's bedroom, holding the knob.

He stopped and leaned forward, resting his head on his arm. He shivered from a cold sweat.

“She is dead,” he moaned to himself.

“She is dead?”

He turned and saw Yuka standing where his vision of Kagome had been. Oddly enough, she was wearing a pink dress. There was no hat or strawberries however.

“Well?”

“Well what?” Souta pretended to not know what she meant.

Yuka stalked toward him and faced him with her red and haunted eyes flashing and her nostrils flaring.

“You're not a child anymore,” she said. “Don't fuck with me. Where is Kagome? Is she dead? Where is her body? Did you do it?”

Souta did something then that he had never done before, and that he would always regret and relive with shame, even when he was an old man. He hit her.

The blow was not great, just the flat of his hand striking her lip, but Yuka stumbled back, her hand clamped over her mouth. When she drew it away her palm bore a small blot of blood.

Already terrified, stunned, and ashamed, Souta expected her to be frightened and dismayed and full of disbelief, as he thought all abused women were. Instead, she looked at him with eyes full of accusation and contempt. Souta lost his nerve and shrank from her.

She turned and left without another word. Souta felt the urge to sit in the hall and cry, but then he remembered why he was there. His mother needed him. That came first. He must be strong.

He opened the door and peeked in.

“Jii-san?” he called.

There was no answer. He thought to leave and check the souvenir shop, but then remembered that it was closed for the day. Souta pushed open the door and heard it squeak. He went into the dim room that smelled of medicine, dust, and plastic.

“Jii-san?”

He heard water running, and concluded that his grandfather was drawing a bath. He rapped his knuckles on the bathroom door.

“Jii-san? I need to talk to you.”

Still no answer.

“Jii-san? Are you okay?”

When there was still no response, Souta decided to open the door anyway. As he reached for the knob, an unexpected sensation made him jump. Cold water was seeping out from under the door and had already soaked his socks.

***

Naraku watched the bloom of his latest creation spread before his feet, and reflected to himself that he was never satisfied.

It was not in his nature to be introspective, but he was bored.

As bored as anyone could be, who satisfied his hunger with prodigious hatred and slaked his thirst on unrelenting envy.

The floor before him crawled with life, with the turbulent tenacity of an ant colony.

Maybe “life” was not the right word.

Naraku was certain of two things: Kagome and Kikyou. He knew that these individuals still lived. He was almost certain that Kagura and Kohaku also still lived, since he had felt them being torn from him, but there was no telling what had happened to them after that. Given all that had happened, they could be dead by now anyway, but he hoped not. He really, really wanted to kill Kagura himself.

But he felt Kagome and Kikyou. He even knew, more or less, how far away they were and that they were, for the moment, stationary.

Throughout the rains, Naraku had hid himself and healed from the explosion on the plateau. He was still not sure what had happened. He was going to kill them, he could still feel the slick coolness of Kagome's throat, there had been no fear. He remembered triumphing over Kagura. Then his flesh was invaded, he knew not how. He felt a fire begin and grow in his rib cage. His heart shuddered. He tried to leave.

That was the last thing he remembered of the plateau. He was thrown away, his body gone. He was trying to understand what had happened when he realized his awareness had been removed and relocated. He saw before him a multitude of swimming stars and he felt his mind stretching, spreading over an impossibly vast space. It was going to break.

Then he was standing by a river, black under a clouded night sky. He saw Kagome's body lying in a lifeless lump on the opposite bank and he gloated over her death.

Above her body he noticed a shape take form and solidify, and he realized with a tiny twinge of fear that it was a tiger.

No, it was a dog—a colossal, silver dog. It looked at him and then licked a front paw. He saw that it was cleansing away blood and thought that it was Kagome's blood.

A foreign, alien voice residing in his head informed him with mild interest, “No, it's yours.”

The beast was upon him. He saw the moon come through the tattered clouds and reside in its liquid black eyes. He felt his heart break in its jaws.

He awoke in his castle, with no recollection how he had gotten there. It was more empty than usual, because nothing remained there now but Kanna.

She was standing beside him like a short, marble statue. When she saw him stir, she came to life and she said:

“You're awake.”

“How did I get here?” he asked her.

“You returned.”

“How long have I slept?”

“I do not know the passage of time, but it was a long time. The summer has gone.”

Naraku checked his chest. There was no wound, not from Kagome or from the dog.

Was that real?

He perceived the absence of Kagura's heart, and he roared with rage. Kanna stepped away from him.

They would pay! They would see if he would be robbed, attacked, and wounded. They think they're so mighty and clever!

He told Kanna to leave and she left, and he then proceeded to destroy the castle. He smashed in the roof and tore down the walls. He shaped and reshaped his body in a dozen different forms so that he could grasp, claw, and rend. He razed the entire area to the ground and pushed the debris into the swollen river, damming it.

It was one of the most spectacular temper tantrums in history, even if no one was around to see it.

Once his mind was clearer, Naraku began to tick away all the injustices done to him, and to count the slights and outrages that he must repay. He considered the ways in which he was to proceed. After some time passed and the dust had settled, he called Kanna to him again.

“Go forth,” he said to her, “and find them. Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango, Kohaku, Kagura, Sesshoumaru, and Kouga. And that little fox demon. Find out if they still live, and where they are and what they are doing, and come back to report. Do not let them see you.”

“What about Kikyou, and Kagome?” Kanna asked him.

Naraku gnashed his teeth. “Just do as I say.”

Naraku was nothing if not calculating. He reckoned the risks, gauged the gains, and never faltered in his faith in his own estimations, no matter how many times he was proven wrong.

So it is little wonder that he could bring himself to break the Jewel again.

There were two pieces now (in addition to the three shards that still eluded him). One, the slightly larger one, he kept for himself. The other he had given to Botsuraku. Weakened by the Plateau, Naraku had spawned Botsuraku out of his rancor, fed him with his unbridled wrath, and raised him to quick adulthood on his implacable hatred. He had poured into him much of his strength and almost all of his hope.

Botsuraku was reliable and obedient because he did not have much in the way of imagination. He stored information like a book with no interest in what it contained.

Naraku had reached the conclusion that imagination among his minions tended to translate into betrayal.

Why was that anyway?

“Go to the village of Edo,” Naraku had ordered him. “Find all you can about the miko Kagome and where she comes from. If you find her or her kin, bring them to me alive. This jewel will help you; let no one else handle it.”

So Kanna and Botsuraku were gone, and Naraku was left alone to preside over his next venture, spread before him in an interminable, writhing carpet. Naraku concentrated his will into a small space in his center, and his form melted into an unremarkable human—pale, cold, and beautiful.

“The time has come to release them of their delusions!”

***

They awoke in the mid-afternoon and the sun was much lower in the sky. Shippou stirred first and disturbed Kagura's sleep. They both stood and stretched their sore and stiff limbs.

“It was not safe for us to sleep out in the open like that, but I was so tired.”

“You got us far enough away from them, I think,” Kagura told him.

Shippou looked around. “Yeah, but still…”

“I wish I hadn't carried us in the opposite direction of the Hyouden,” he fretted.

“There's no help for that now.”

Shippou was silent for a moment, while he kicked the turf with his foot. Kagura sat back down and started to toy with clovers and grass blades.

“I guess it doesn't matter anyway,” he shrugged.

“Oh?” Kagura looked up. “Are we not going there anymore?”

“Oh, we will, eventually. But, right now, we need to figure out something about your powers.”

Kagura looked down again. After a long silence, she spoke.

“I know. But what is there to do? I've tried a few times, to fly or to…do something, but…”

“I know someone who may be able to help. Do you know Totosai?”

Kagura started. “I haven't thought of him in years. He made Tokijin, right?”

“And Tenseiga and Tessaiga. If anyone can help you, Totosai can. Or he knows someone who can.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

Shippou sighed. “No, not really. I haven't seen him in a long time either, and it's likely we wouldn't find him in the same place anyway.”

He looked around at the bleak landscape. Shadows lengthened across the land.

“Everyone seems to be so scattered,” he murmured.

Kagura wished she could at least contribute ideas to this outfit, but her mind offered her up nothing.

“We'll just have to make it up as we go along,” he said.

“Umm…okay.”

Kagura did not think much of this idea, but as she could think of little to improve it, she merely shrugged.

A strange breeze lifted Kagura's hair and she look up to see the hawk had returned, his talons plowing the earth. She stood up.

“Are you leaving then? I cannot fly.”

Kagura thought she had managed to sound indifferent, but instead her tone was tragic and her voice almost broken. Shippou pretended not to hear.

“Don't be stupid,” his young voice came from the raptor. “Climb on.”

Kagura stared at him.

“Well?” he clicked his beak at her with impatience. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

“Are you insane?”

“I am not going to wander around in these hills for the next century looking for that old coot. If you don't climb up on your own I'll pick you up by your feet. You won't like it.”

“You wouldn't dare!”

“Who do you think you're talking to?”

Kagura stood, conflicted for a moment, doubting and considering, until at last she swore under her breath and, using care not to pull out feathers, climbed onto the bird's back. He gave her only a moment to adjust and settle before he flapped his wings in a hurricane and was off.

Kagura gasped and clung harder to his shoulders.

“Don't pinch!” he cried once they were coasting above the mountains. “You'd think you'd be used to flying.”

“I knew back then that I wouldn't fall,” Kagura complained.

“I won't let you fall, nincompoop.”

“What did you call me?”

Shippou laughed.

***

Souta sat in his grandfather's ruined bedchamber and decided he did not believe in any kind of god. There were no prophecies; his mother was wrong. Prophecy implied destiny, and that was a lie.

Some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any method in it. The world was exactly what one would expect if there was no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

He had finally been forced to break down the bathroom door, and thus he found his grandfather, an ashen and shriveled doll, floating face down in the tub.

That was hours ago, and men in uniforms had come and gone, carrying away his earthly remains. His mother had gone with them, with her tissues in hand, to see to the final arrangements. She had wanted him to accompany her, but he refused. He did not want to be any part of it and never wanted to see that version of his grandfather again. He hoped that the next time he saw him he would be just grey ashes and white smoke.

Yuka had charitably gone with Higurashi instead. She had not once even looked at Souta.

He sat in the faint light of evening. Only a few rays of the sinking sun made it though the slats of the blinds and onto the soaked carpet.

How did it come to this?

How did I become this?

He stood up and left, his sneakers squishing on the floor.

Souta left the room, walked down the hall, through the living room, out the side door, across the shrine courtyard, down the long steps, and out into the street. He began to walk faster.

Kagome was probably not coming back.

He walked faster.

They had always known it was dangerous.

He walked faster.

Too dangerous.

He walked still faster.

Kagome was not coming back.

He began to run. He ran down the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians and cyclists who jumped to the side and stared after him in amazement. He ran past the neon lights just beginning to glow in the dusk. He ran past the shops and delis where he had followed Kagome like a puppy, all those years ago. Visions of himself eating ice cream, begging for penny candy, of Kagome in her sunhat, of red strawberries printed on pink fabric, blurred past him.

He would keep running. He would find a street fair and eat cotton candy and peach ice cream until he was sick. He would find friends who still wanted to play games in the street. He would sneak into a movie. He would spend all day in an arcade.

He would stop by Kagome's school and make sure she had everything she needed.

Kagome doesn't go to school anymore.

Souta ran faster.

His feet began to feel like lead weights, but he refused to notice.

He would run to this past notion of himself and embrace it, so that then…so then…

Everything else would go back too.

He collapsed. It was sheer luck that he did not land on the sidewalk or the street. He had arrived at a small community park. He lay sprawled on the grass, panting and near vomiting. He heard people nearby express surprise and concern, but they were all illusions to him.

No. It's not coming back. It's never coming back again.

How awful! The way time passes!

Souta panted and pawed at the grass, trying not to throw up.

What did you expect? Kagome's voice asked him from the throne in his head. You're still alive, aren't you?

He lay there until he could look up and see the weak reddish light of one star, struggling to overcome the city lights.

You can't get here fast enough.

***

Shippou's muscles were screaming after less than two hours, and he cursed his weakness. He was about to tell Kagura to prepare herself for landing when he saw a strange shape in the northern sky. It was dark and elongated and seemed to be growing larger. It was moving in their direction. At first, he feared it was a dragon or a demon of some other kind. After a few nervous minutes, however, his heart lightened for the first time in months.

“Hachi!” he cried.

“What?” Kagura was startled. He had not spoken for the last hour.

“Hachi!” he answered. “He's a friend of Miroku's.”

Kagura looked around and found the shape coming toward them from the north. It looked almost like a gigantic, flying leaf.

“Hachi!” Shippou called out to the shape. “Come this way and land!”

“Shippou,” Kagura whispered to him. “Are you sure?”

But he did not answer. She was surrounded by the hurricane again for a moment, then he became still, and she slid off his back to the ground. By this time, Hachi had landed and transformed into the normal semblance of a raccoon demon. He was taller than Shippou, though not by much, and his dark eyes were wide and darting about. He frequently stroked his long, canine-like nose in a nervous gesture.

When he saw the hawk transform into the kitsune Shippou, he was all amazement.

“Well I'll be,” he exclaimed. “What's all this now?”

“It's a long story, Hachi,” Shippou greeted him with a short bow. “I hope you're doing well?”

Hachi's paw ran down his nose a couple of times.

“Well, not so well as I would wish,” he said mournfully. “But you? Where are the others? Where is Miroku-sama?”

Shippou restrained his tears and clenched his jaws.
“I don't know.”

“What?” Hachi exclaimed. “What happened?”

Shippou realized then that he had not talked about the Plateau since that terrible day; he had not even thought about it (if he could help it). He braced himself and began explaining to Hachi the events of the day the short summer ended. Hachi listened with an expression of growing distress.

“Oh, this is terrible!” he wailed. “My master! What has become of him?”

“Who is your master?” Kagura broke in, unable to contain her curiosity.

Hachi looked at her with doubt.

“Oh, she's alright,” Shippou explained. “She's with me now.”

Kagura chose not to reflect upon that rather offhand description of her salvation.

“Miroku-sama is my lord,” Hachi told her.

Kagura was surprised by this, but could not question him further because he once again fell to pieces. He lamented in a loud wail and tore at the fur on his head.

“Stop that!” Shippou barked at him. “Enough of this Hachi, Miroku would be ashamed.”

That brought the raccoon demon up short; he gulped down the rest of his tears.

“He may be alive. I don't know,” Shippou laid a hand on the raccoon demon's shoulder. “We must have hope.”

“Then I must go look for him!”

Shippou considered that. “Yes, I suppose that would be the right thing for you to do.”

“But before you go,” he continued. “I need your help. We're looking for Totosai, the demon sword smith. Do you know where we could find him?”

Hachi looked up, eyes widening again.

“What luck!” he exclaimed. “I saw Totosai less than half a moon ago!”

Relief flooded Shippou and almost made his knees weak. In spite of his confident air, he had not really believed that they would find Totosai anytime soon, if ever.

Hachi explained that he had come across the old demon living on an island to the north. It had been nothing but a knoll, but the rains had flooded the valley around it. He pointed them in the general direction and gave them descriptions of landmarks to look for.

“I don't know if he'll still be there though,” he fretted. “The land is always changing these days and…even worse things…”

He voice trailed off and his eyes filled with sick dread.

“Hachi?” Shippou looked at him closely. “What's the matter?”

Hachi looked around as if expecting a spy to appear from behind the bushes.

“Have you heard of the Tsuchigumo?” he asked in a whisper.

“Tsuchigumo?” Shippou tried out the strange word. “No, I don't think so.”

“They're new demons. No one knows where they came from. They're almost human looking, but they're spiders.”

“Oh, you mean those,” Shippou waved his hand. “Yeah, we've already fought some of those off. They're weak enough.”

“But they are so many!” Hachi cried. “What you've seen here is only the fringe. To the north they cover the land like locusts!”

Shippou's heart sank.

“And then, there's the movement,” Hachi said the word with loathing and contempt.

“And just what is that then?” Shippou asked, beginning to feel overwhelmed.

“They're just humans, I think, but they blame the rains on the priesthood—monks, priests, and priestesses. Some have been driven from villages…and those were the lucky ones.”

“That's outrageous!” Shippou cried.

Hachi nodded. “That's what I was doing when you spotted me. I was trying to find you guys to warn Miroku-sama, and Kagome-sama, that they may be in danger.”

“Thank you Hachi,” Shippou took his hands, “you've been very helpful. Go and look for your master. If you find him, or any of my friends, before I do, look after them for me, will you?”

Hachi looked at him in surprise.

“You're still going to look for Totosai? You'll have to go through a hornet's nest to get to him, you know. Why not come with me?”

“I think we have to do this. You'll just have to trust me.”

He did not have the nerve to confide in Hachi that he believed Naraku still alive and well, that he would almost certainly come after Kagura soon, and that he, Shippou, was not yet strong enough to protect her. Increasing Kagura's ability to defend herself was an absolute imperative.

Hachi would not even stay with them that night. He shared some food that he had pilfered from some abandoned storehouse somewhere. Shippou almost refused on the grounds that they did not really need it, but thought better of it. He thanked Hachi again and bid him to be careful. The raccoon demon took to the sky again and sped away to the south, seeking the Plateau.

Shippou and Kagura hid themselves in a deep glen shaded with thick underbrush. They did not sleep however, but sat all night with their backs together, straining their ears to listen to the sounds of anger and despair, growing up around them like a tempest.

[End of Chapter Eighteen]

[Next Chapter: Running up that Hill]

Author's Notes: Time for some explanations.

I try very hard to use canon material or to draw on Japanese history and folklore. The only original character of any significance so far is Tamotsu. Botan and Momiji are the red and white priestesses (from anime only). I'm sure most people remember Nobunaga. Taroumaru, from the end of the last chapter, was the son of the headman from the whole incident with the evil water god.

It should not be supposed that Sesshoumaru and Jaken are imagining that objects in their house are playing pranks on them because they're crazy or going crazy (although they probably are going a little bit crazy, especially Sesshoumaru). The Tsukumogami are objects that are “alive and aware”, something they gain after reaching their 100th birthday. At this point, they're a type of youkai. Some common items, like sandals, jars, and scrolls, have their own, specific name. The mirror for example, which we see in this chapter, is the ungaikyo.

Tsuchigumo means “ground spider”. There were once a people in ancient Japan known by this name, probably due to some mythical and exaggerated accounts of battles with them. The term appears also in legends of spider monsters, some in the form of beautiful women who trap travelers and such. My Tsuchigumo are nothing like that of course, but that's where the name comes from.